Key Points:
- Elon Musk sent a threatening text message to OpenAI president Greg Brockman just two days before their trial started.
- Musk donated $38 million to the artificial intelligence startup before leaving the board of directors in 2018.
- Lawyers representing OpenAI plan to use the text message to prove Musk only wants to damage a business rival.
- OpenAI currently has a valuation of $850 billion, while Musk recently merged his competing startup xAI with SpaceX for $250 billion.
Elon Musk sent a highly threatening text message to OpenAI president Greg Brockman just two days before their massive legal battle started. A new court filing reveals that the billionaire reached out to gauge interest in a settlement agreement. Brockman read the message and suggested that both sides simply walk away and drop their respective legal claims. Musk rejected that peaceful idea immediately and fired back with a harsh warning. He told Brockman that he and Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman would become the most hated men in America by the end of the week. Musk added that if Brockman insisted on fighting in court, he would make sure that public hatred became a reality.
Musk co-founded the artificial intelligence company back in 2015 alongside Altman and Brockman. He filed this multi-billion-dollar lawsuit against the company and its two top executives in 2024. The lawsuit claims the two leaders broke their original founding promise. Musk says they committed to keeping the company a strict nonprofit organization with a clear charitable mission to protect humanity. Instead, he argues, they transformed the startup into a massive corporate cash machine designed to enrich themselves and their wealthy investors.
The trial began late last month inside a federal court in Oakland, California. Brockman will likely take the witness stand as soon as Monday morning. Lawyers representing OpenAI filed paperwork late Sunday night to enter the angry text message into the official court record. They plan to show the jury the message while Brockman answers questions on the stand. The legal team wants to use the text to expose the true intentions behind the entire lawsuit.
The lawyers wrote a clear explanation for why the judge should admit the text message as evidence. They stated that the message clearly proves motive and bias on the part of the billionaire. They argue that Musk does not care about the charitable mission at all. Instead, they believe he filed the lawsuit simply to attack a direct business competitor and ruin the personal reputations of its top leaders. OpenAI dismisses all his legal claims as absolutely baseless and without merit.
Musk already spent three long days on the witness stand last week. His testimony took up almost the entire first week of the trial proceedings. During his time on the stand, he answered dozens of questions about his early days launching the startup. He repeatedly pointed his finger at Altman and Brockman, aggressively accusing them of plotting to steal a charity away from the public. He painted himself as a victim who funded a noble cause only to watch greedy executives hijack it.
During the early years, Musk donated roughly $38 million of his own money to get the organization off the ground. He argues in his lawsuit that the executives took his money and used it for unauthorized commercial purposes. From the witness stand, he told the court that the new for-profit arm of the company basically became the tail wagging the dog. He believes the relentless pursuit of money destroyed the original goal of building safe artificial intelligence for everyone.
The billionaire left the OpenAI board of directors in 2018 after a power struggle. Five years later, he decided to build his own competing artificial intelligence startup called xAI. He officially merged xAI with his rocket company, SpaceX, this past February. That specific merger deal valued his new artificial intelligence venture at a staggering $250 billion. This massive competing business gives Musk a very clear financial reason to want OpenAI to suffer in court and lose its market dominance.
Meanwhile, OpenAI took a very different and highly successful path after Musk walked out the door. The company fully embraced commercial sales and established a dedicated for-profit subsidiary in 2018. Business exploded a few years later when they launched the highly popular ChatGPT tool in late 2022. Millions of people use the tool every day to write emails, write computer code, and answer complex questions. Today, private investors value OpenAI at an astonishing $850 billion, making it one of the most valuable private companies in the entire world.
Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers currently oversees the high-stakes case. She runs a tight courtroom and expects the two sides to keep the proceedings moving without unnecessary delays. The trial will resume at exactly 11:30 in the morning Eastern Time on Monday. Legal experts expect major fireworks when Brockman finally takes the oath. He will have to face tough questions about the text message, the company’s early days, and his relationship with the world’s richest man.
